In an information processing apparatus for analyzing a structured document data such as XML document data input thereto, a SAX parser, for example, analyzes the end elements of elements in XML document data and processes the analytical results at the moment analysis is concluded.
In the specification of Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2000-148438, a user is allowed to designate the element name of a constituent element, only the designated element is analyzed and the result of analysis is output.
If a large amount of data is contained in a document structure unit, which is the unit in which input document data is processed, the information processing apparatus will require a large amount of resources in order to process the document. For example, if XML document data is such that image data of large size has been embedded in an src attribute by a description “img src=”, a large-capacity buffer will be required in order to store the state of the image data during the analysis thereof. If an independent interface for dealing with such a structured document is provided, there is the possibility that processing can be performed without requiring a large-capacity buffer. However, higher costs are entailed in order to have applications support such an arrangement.